Word: plantagenet
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Since Henry II could not possibly recognize himself or his brood in Goldmancolor, the playgoer should not strive to do so. Winter is rather a day in the life of that boisterous Plantagenet family in the little 12th century castle halfway down the next block. It is Christmas Eve, and a spat is in progress. That is what the play is, an interminable family spat. The three boys, or brats, want Daddy's crown, and they sulk and scream over it as if it were the prize in the Cracker Jack box. Daddy wants Mommy's booming piece...
...lack of precedent for declaring that the baby bastard has a cause of action should not be a deterrent to such ruling," ruled Judge Squire, quoting the late jurist, Sir Percy Winfield: "If that were a valid objection, the common law would now be what it was in the Plantagenet period." The state's motion that the bastard's case, if tried and won, would leave the courts open to an endless array of claims Judge Squire dismissed just as swiftly. This approach is "unrealistic, illogical and unsupportable," said he. "Tangential reasoning should not be utilized to destroy...
...play by Jean Anouilh, in which English history wars with an impudent Gallic wit. Director Peter Glenville has flung the drama onto the screen like a vast Bayeux tapestry, held fast with the lancet-sharp performances of Peter O'Toole as Henry II, England's first Plantagenet ruler, and of Richard Burton as the 12th century martyr Thomas Becket. Henry loved Becket, raised him to eminence as Archbishop of Canterbury, then lost his onetime friend in a struggle between church and state that ended with Becket's murder...
...deranged but enchanting mentality that Author Jackson has chosen this time belongs to Mary Katherine ("Merricat") Blackwood-actual age 18, mental age a precocious twelve. "I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet," she reflects, "and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom." She is a gentle child who promises herself to be kinder to her Uncle Julian. She is already kind enough to Constance and to her enigmatic cat Jonas. But for some reason she is never allowed to touch knives...
...encouraged the play's most endearing virtues--its consistently high level of wit and the fundamental ingenuity of a plot that covers the historical epoch of man twice. Tom Segall as Nathan is a ludicrously, wonderfully pathetic God; Art Roberts (Rex Regis) is indistinguishable from a thousand harried executives. Plantagenet himself (Jere Whiting) seems determined to squeeze the juice from his lines; perpetually overcome by the cleverness of the dialogue he forgets that his significance lies not in his pose but in his machine. The grey hireling of the bureaucracy, the only real example of Wolfson's bitterness...